Bag Blog

In a four-month-long race to recycle the most plastic bags by school and by student, Arthur Kramer and Ben Milam Elementary Schools emerged as the clear winners.With 17 Dallas schools competing, Arthur Kramer collected over a whopping 255,000 bags and collected over 176 bags per student. Their hard work was announced by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings at the Earth Day Texas event held today.

“These kids demonstrated that by focusing on what can be done they did the right thing and recycled almost a million plastic bags and other wraps and films,” said Mayor Rawlings."Since the beginning of the year, thousands of our elementary school kids collected, competed and learned to not treat plastic bags like trash.The 3R's — reduce, reuse and recycle — are now a part of their everyday lives.Learning that at an early age is a big win for us all and a valuable learning experience for their parents as well.”

The A Bag’s Life competition kicked off at the beginning of the year and ended today, on Earth Day, as a way to inspire, excite and challenge students and their parents to recycle plastic bags. Thousands of retailers across Texas have collection bins in their stores and will take back the bags, as well as other plastic wraps.

In all, 17 schools in the Dallas Independent School Districts signed up for the Plastic Bag Recycling Challenge, collecting over 650,000 bags. Challenge sponsors included the City of Dallas, DISD, Kroger, Tom Thumb, Albertsons, the Texas Retailers Association, Trex Company and A Bag’s Life.

Both of the winning schools will win a Trex bench, made from approximately 50,000 recycled plastic bags.

“It’s exciting for us to see that a terrific lesson was learned and that a lot of fun was had along the way,” said April Martin Nickels, Kroger Public Affairs Manager.“Now that kids know they can recycle their bags at so many Dallas retailers, including all Kroger stores, and at thousands of locations across Texas, we’re confident this next generation of our society will share their learnings and excitement amongst their friends and family and encourage them to do the same.”